Ginger Bug

So ... after my Ginger Kombucha post, I have gone down a few youtube rabbit holes which have lead me to being interested in homemade sodas.

This lead me to making a Ginger Bug starter last week.

Considering how long I've been border-line obsessed with fermentation, I'm a little surprised I have not come across ginger bug until last week, but I had not heard of it until I started watching youtube videos on Ginger Beer.

What is Ginger Bug?

A ginger bug is a wild-fermented starter culture made with sugar, ginger, and water. It takes about a little less than a week of daily diligence to make one, and you can use it to make probiotic, naturally bubbly soft drinks, sodas, herbal beers, and tonics.

 

Like most wild / spontaneous fermentations. Ginger bug is ridiculously easy to make.

There are lots of recipes on the internet .. mostly exactly (or almost exactly) the same. I thought the best information was on The Fermentation Adventure youtube channel. 

To make my ginger bug ... I got a quart mason jar and combined

3 tablespoons grated ginger root (I grated the skin and all)
3 tablespoons sugar
2 cups water.

And ... let the natural yeast and bacteria off the ginger root start to ferment the sugar.

Every day for 5 to 7 days, I "fed" the solution another tablespoon of sugar and another tablespoon of ginger root.

It starts to get foamy and bubbling after a few days. And it smells wonderful (if you like the aroma of ginger)

Around day 5, the solution was getting pretty thick with ginger bits, and I added another 1/2 or so of water.

The directions say that after 5 to 7 days, go ahead and put the refrigerator at which point you can reduce your feeding schedule to about a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of ginger root every week.

So ... now I have this Ginger Root ... I'm going to make some Ginger Beer. Again, there are lots of recipes out on the interwebs, but honestly that Fermentation Adventure youtube channel seems to have a bunch of really good content.

My ginger beer recipe will be a little different. Stay tuned on Sheppy's Blog: Ginger and you'll see how that turns out.

Now that I have this "bug" of course I'll have to try out some other homemade "natural" sodas as well.

FWIW ... here is the ginger bug video that got me started on this weird little adventure ...

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